Hooray for Photoshop!

People at work have been bugging me for the last year now to get my picture taken to put on our company website. I really don't like pictures of me - so I have been avoiding it. Well, I was informed last week that we are sending out a letter to a bunch of potential clients and I was the only person without a picture - so I couldn't put it off any more. I called around to see where I could get a business photo taken - but it was SO expensive. So my coworker said she would just take my picture at the office and use that. After a little mini photo shoot yesterday - we realized that it just wasn't going to work - the picture was so different from the professional ones - it really stuck out.

So I bit the bullet and went in to get some professional pictures today. It took 10 minutes to take the pictures and I was really getting upset about spending so much money on 10 minutes of pictures - then I sat down in front of a computer screen while the photographer airbrushed my photo and touched everything up - suddenly I was seeing the value of a professional photographer.

I have to say - even knowing that my next birthday will be the big 3-0- I have never felt as old as I did while watching him zoom in on my forehead and under my eyes and erase all the little lines and bags!

Before

After

Tagged

My coworker tagged me a little while ago - sorry it took so long for me to get to it Mel.

8 Shows I like to watch:

1. Chuck
2. Eli Stone
3. Pushing Daisies (and yes #2 and #3 were both just canceled - not too happy about it)
4. Gilmore Girls
5. Amazing Race
6. Anything on HGTV
7. Most things on TLC
8. Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (I was quite obsessed with this show in Middle School)

8 Restaurants I like to eat at:
1. Wingers
2. Macaroni Grill
3. Olive Garden
4. Fongs (in Rexburg - best Chinese ever!)
5. Mings (next to my house - second best Chinese ever!)
6. Bombay House
7. Paradise Bakery or Kneaders
8. Red Lobster

8 Things that happened today:

1. Overslept (that happens everyday)
2. Got my picture taken
3. Got rid the office Christmas decoration out of my office (it gets passed around from person to person every day)
4. Ate a greek salad
5. Went to Enrichment and had yummy tomato soup
6. Went to tithing settlement
7. Updated my blog
8. Watched the end of a bad cheesy Christmas movie on Lifetime

8 Things I look forward to:

1. Christmas
2. Getting the rest of my house painted
3. Getting my attic turned into a loft
4. Going to Russia
5. Going on a date (the drought has to end sometime right?)
6. Getting married
7. Seeing my siblings get married
8. Playing in the snow

8 Things on my wish list:

1. A new washer and dryer
2. A completed loft
3. A new bed
4. New couches
5. A boyfriend
6. A healthy family
7. My car and house paid off
8. World Peace :)

8 People I am tagging:
I think most everyone has already done this - so if you haven't - tag you're it!

I ♥ The Men in My Life

So, I started this post over a month ago - and just never got around to finishing/posting it! I am a slacker, I know.

I have THE BEST Dad and Brother in the world. You see, there is a little known fact about me, I hate - HATE - textured walls. I just don't like them. Unfortunately, my entire house is textured. Except where the previous owners hung their pictures - in those places they covered the holes up with Spackle - but didn't texture it. So - randomly throughout the walls there are splotches of smoothness. It just looks really cheap and tacky. So the first home improvement item on my list was of course, getting rid of the textured walls. Has anyone tried this before? I hadn't, but my Dad has. Let me tell you, it is not the easiest or neatest process. Despite knowing this, my sweet Dad agreed to help me and my brother smooth out my walls. I figured we would start with a small, easy room. So the first weekend in October we had a mudding party. Now to smooth textured walls requires a lot of mud. You have to mud all the walls, let it dry, sand, and repeat - until they are smooth - for us it took 3 layers of mud - that is three times scraping mud onto the walls and three times sanding it smooth - with dust flying into every imaginable corner of my house. Of course then you have to prime the walls, and then paint the walls. For two weeks my roommate and I survived with our dining room set up in the living room while my kind brother and dad spent all their free time helping me mud, sand, prime, install a chair rail, and paint (and help me decide what colors to paint - I am a TERRIBLE decision maker). I am really happy with the result - except that it makes the rest of my house look even worse than it did before.

After it was all done, I was considering hiring someone to do the other rooms. But now, six weeks later, the memory is fading and I am thinking I can tackle the other rooms after Christmas. Anyone want to join in a mudding party?